What We've Learned About Training Online
This month, two of COSI's trainers and clinicians, Neil Boris and Joe Coyne, are attending the International Attachment Conference in Leuven, presenting their session: How to Make Online Training in Attachment-Based Intervention Experiential: The Circle of Security Example.
Their session tackles one of the hardest questions in online learning, and one that is especially loaded in this field: how do you make training in attachment genuinely felt, not just understood?
The Problem With Moving Attachment Training Online
COSI was already moving toward online delivery when COVID-19 shut down in-person training entirely. The transition forced a harder question than "how do we move this online?" It forced us to ask what we might lose, and whether we could get it back.
That question was difficult because the in-person trainings had always prioritized emotional and experiential learning. Attachment knowledge is not primarily cognitive. A practitioner does not understand attachment concepts solely by reading about them. Something has to shift in how they sit with a caregiver, tolerate uncertainty, and stay present when their own attachment system is activated. Reading about that is not the same as feeling it.
So how do you build that felt quality into a screen?
What We Built
COSI developed its online training using the Understanding by Design model, combining synchronous and asynchronous learning across multiple courses designed for practitioners at different levels of experience. Since then, we have trained more than 8,000 individuals from more than 20 countries.
The numbers matter. But they do not answer the original question.
Responding to this challenge required going against most defaults in digital learning: case material used in a way that evokes personal responses rather than intellectual analysis; branching scenarios that put practitioners inside difficult moments rather than above them; short and medium-form video designed to create emotional impact, not just convey content; live sessions structured to do what asynchronous learning cannot, and asynchronous learning structured to do what live sessions cannot.
What We Are Still Figuring Out
Not every challenge has a clean answer. Practitioners who arrive with deep attachment knowledge present a different training problem than those with strong clinical instincts but no theoretical grounding. The training that serves one well can leave the other unmoved.
How do you generate genuine emotional engagement across time zones, with a learner you may never meet in person?
We have made real progress, but there is more to learn.
Why It Matters
The International Attachment Conference brings together researchers, clinicians, and trainers who are shaping how this field grows. Neil and Joe's session reflects more than two decades of COSI training experience, and a commitment to asking honest questions about what it actually takes to disseminate attachment-based learning at scale.
